Posts Tagged ‘garage remodel’

Sorry for ducking out like that. I’ve been sick as a dog fighting a wicked summer cold for almost a week now. During the midst of which I’ve been researching and writing an upcoming column for Bon Appétit (thank the lord I wrote my tasting notes before I lost all sense of taste and smell). Which is why I haven’t had time to finish unpacking my office or hang pictures on the walls or take photos or any of that fun stuff. But even amid the chaos, when I sat down yesterday in my sparkling new office chair and pulled up to my newly arrived and assembled George Nelson Swag Leg Work Table, I was ready to write. Would this sublime desk, by osmosis, make my prose any prettier? I wondered. “Might be more effective if it were a Nelson George desk,” replied my esteemed colleague Eric Asimov of the New York Times. As with yesterday’s column on American Gewürztraminers, the man has a point.

It’s been a busy, busy week with a three-day weekend arriving just in time. To see what we’ve been up to and for the latest pictures on the home office, head on over to Herman Miller’s LIFEWORK blog for a look at the garage doors and the beautiful azores-colored paint—the color of sea off the Portuguese coast, the Schoolhouse electric cage lights (above, and more on those later), and the bookcases (here and here). Hope your weekend is off to a gorgeous start! It’s sunny here, and Tiny G and I are heading out to blow some bubbles. But first we need to put on his shoes…

Now that the paint has dried on our gorgeous red lacquer bookcase, I’ve been unpacking box after box of books, magazines, more books, more magazines. Firmly rooted in the Type A camp, I wanted to streamline all my back issues of Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Saveur, Los Angeles Times Magazine and various other pubs containing clips from yesteryears. I found these untreated wood magazine files at Ikea:

You can stain or oil the magazine files. I’m leaving them untreated. But speaking of color, I also unpacked three of my favorite nail varnishes, which used to live on my desk at Bon Appétit, in case of emergency: Chanel Ruby Slipper, Laura Mercier Caviar Dreams, OPI My Private Jet. Also from my former office, a Friedlander poster from the 2005 exhibit at MoMA, which was AMAZING. Beside it sit 10 individual French press coffee makers, just in case 9 of you would like to come over for brunch…I’m ready.

Today we are supposed to be all finished with our garage project! Of course I don’t believe that for a second, having lived through a major house renovation two years ago, but we’re close. That much I know. At this point, all that’s left is to put the hardware on the new custom-built garage carriage doors, a pull on the “secret” door that leads to the storage, and a final coat of Benjamin Moore “Poppy” paint (above) on the bookshelf. In fact, the bookshelf has proven to be something of a challenge. High gloss paint is a pain in the patootie! Just ask the last painter, who painstakingly painted all the woodwork in our dining room in high-gloss Farrow & Ball “Fawn.” But the results are so worth it!

We should be 95% finished with the garage by the end of the day! But let’s start with last week’s exciting victory, the roughhewn back wall. For the design backstory and method for the wash on the tongue-and-groove Douglas Fir back wall, head over to Herman Miller’s LIFEWORK blog. The inspiration came from my neighbor Debra, who is the last word in taste on our block. She had the vision to see that roughhewn Doug Fir beams washed in gray would be this beautiful:

I’m going to admit that I’ve been kind of tough to take recently—I’ve been super amped up over paint. Bordering on obsessive. I know, I know. It’s just paint. And so I can’t blame my poor husband for telling my sister last weekend: “She’s like a cat on a hot tin roof with this paint thing.” But luckily for him and our marriage, my paint angst has a Hollywood ending. After the dreamy wall color went up yesterday (more on that later) I was able to take a look at red paint samples for the bookcase in its true environment. And so, after MUCH neurotic deliberation, today we begin priming the bookcase to paint in Benjamin Moore Poppy! A heartfelt thank you to my design muses Debra and Lizzie for talking me off the hot tin roof.

Sorry, sorry! I promised exciting paint photos, but I’m waiting for them to go up over at Herman Miller’s LIFEWORK blog before I share here. Also, the 15 mph winds today slowed down our paint progress considerably. In the meantime, I’ll show you what isn’t happening. And that’s this Poppy paint from Benjamin Moore. I seriously love the color, but it is skewing too pink? Do I need something a little more BLOOD RED with more black in it? I need to make a decision on the red for the book case in the next 36 hours. So please—if you have any thoughts on shades of red, would love to hear!

I have a favorite pair of Lanvin ballet flats that are the prettiest shade of red I think I’ve ever seen. It’s almost a tomato, or, more accurately, what the Ben Color Capture app on my iPhone calls “Poppy.” (There are fantastic applications for this fantastic application, like when my friend Katie photographed our friend Hugh and discovered that his skin tone was akin to Benjamin Moore’s “Coyote Trail” and “Nutmeg.”)

But back to my shoes. According to Farrow & Ball, the color is called Incarnadine, or blood red. Whatever it’s called, I want a bookcase painted this color in my new office—and I love how it pops against the above shade of F&B’s Pigeon gray, which is one of the contenders for the office walls.

Check this out. Up go the walls! For more before/after pics, head over to Herman Miller’s LIFEWORK blog, where I’ve been chronicling the reno. What you’re looking at took place earlier this week, so I’ll share more in the coming days of the gorgeous rough hewn beams we put across the ceiling, and the drywall that’s been going up today. It’s really, really, really exciting. In the meantime, is it wrong that I want to play with these?

Several years ago, sitting over brunch at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, a fashion editor friend in town from NY said, “You know what you are? A foodinista.” I think we were discussing Louboutins and guanciale at the time. But whatever it was, the name made sense. And it ... Continue reading →